Follow the Narrative–I Mean Science

Posted on 13 October 2020 by eehines

Here’s some science—the Great Barrington Declaration.

James Freeman, in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal column, opened with this:

This week dozens of esteemed medical experts with blue-chip academic credentials published a warning about the destructive policies adopted to address Covid-19. Since the Sunday publication of this Great Barrington Declaration more than a thousand biological scientists and more than 1,500 medical practitioners have added their names to the petition. Yet it’s been almost entirely ignored by the media outlets that spend much of their days presenting themselves as obedient to science.

The declaration says this, in part:

This is a preview of Follow the Narrative–I Mean Science. Read the full post (411 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Likelihoods

Posted on 7 October 2020 by eehines

Scott Gottlieb and Yuval Levin had an uproar in their knickers in their Sunday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

The two center their piece on the failure of President Donald Trump, et al., to take precautions satisfactory to Gottlieb and Levin to minimize their chances of getting the Wuhan Virus. The money quote in their piece, though—from my perspective—is this:

For months, some of them condoned nonchalance about the virus, mocking precautions such as wearing masks as marks of weakness and dismissing public-health concerns as overwrought.

This is a preview of Likelihoods. Read the full post (179 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Testing Criteria

Posted on 28 September 2020 by eehines

The FDA wants to add new Wuhan Virus vaccine testing criteria to emergency use authorization applications—weeks after several pharma companies’ Phase III trials (the last phase requiring substantial data collection before EUA can be requested, the phase whose satisfactory completion is required before general use authorization can be requested) already have begun.

As part of the new guidelines, manufacturers seeking authorization would have to follow trial participants for at least two months after a second vaccine shot.
The new standards would also reportedly ask developers to identify a specific number of severe COVID-19 cases in patients who received a placebo in trials.

This is a preview of Testing Criteria. Read the full post (219 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

“Sharing a household with children and risk of COVID-19”

Posted on 25 September 2020 by eehines

That’s the title of a medRxiv preprint (unpeer-reviewed) paper that looked at the risk to adults—in particular, Scottish NHS healthcare workers, NHS-contracted general practice service providers, and members of their households—of contracting the Wuhan Virus (my term) when they lived in households with children with ages ranging from new-born to 11 years old. Total participants numbered more than 300,000 adults and children.

The results are correlative rather than causative, but the strength of the correlation is strongly suggestive.

The risk of hospitalization with COVID-19 was lower in those with one child and lower still in those with two or more children….

This is a preview of “Sharing a household with children and risk of COVID-19”. Read the full post (214 words, estimated 51 secs reading time)

Unsafe at any Quickness

Posted on 7 September 2020 by eehines

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn is being asked by some 20 Senators—Republican; no Progressive-Democrat wanted any part of this—to take the abortifacient Mifeprex or mifepristone off the market.

The senators say that based on FDA reporting the drug has resulted in the death of more than 3.7 million unborn children and two dozen pregnant women.
They also said the drug has caused at least 4,195 negative reactions in pregnant women including hemorrhaging, excruciating abdominal pain and severe, life-threatening infections.

The drug is unsafe for a significant fraction of the mothers who take the drug. It’s 100% unsafe for the 3.7 million unborn babies that have been killed with it.

This is a preview of Unsafe at any Quickness. Read the full post (145 words, estimated 35 secs reading time)

Panic Over Kern County, California

Posted on 19 August 2020 by eehines

Kern County, California, is in serious Wuhan Virus trouble. Or so think some journalists and the State of California.

Residents of the agriculture-rich Central Valley are falling victim to Covid-19 at the highest rates in California….

And

Kern County, which lies in the Central Valley’s southernmost part, had the highest per capita rate of new Covid-19 infections in California between July 31 and Aug. 13, averaging 56.2 new cases per 100,000 people….

Now for some context, using Alejandro Lazo’s—he’s the author of the piece at the link—own numbers.

This is a preview of Panic Over Kern County, California. Read the full post (205 words, estimated 49 secs reading time)

The Doctors Video

Posted on 12 August 2020 by eehines

Here, through the efforts of One America News Network, is the video of facts and considered medical opinion that the amateur censors of Facebook, Alphabet (through its YouTube and Google subsidiaries) and Twitter don’t want you to see because it runs counter to their pre-written narratives.

It’s 45 minutes long and well worth every moment, whether or not you agree with their opinions, because it’s useful to get all sides of the matter. Especially if Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey don’t want you to see the whole story.

This is a preview of The Doctors Video. Read the full post (124 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

New Case Rates and Death Rates

Posted on 7 July 2020 by eehines

Current data indicate a reduction in new (read: confirmed) cases of Wuhan Virus—45,000 cases on Independence Day vs 50,000 cases the day prior. Fun with statistics: that’s a 10% drop—wow.

It is promising, but a single datum isn’t very dispositive.

What really interested me, though, is this, also presented in the article at the link:

In contrast to the surge in positive diagnoses, the death rate has slowed mostly to the hundreds a day in recent weeks, from a peak of more than 2,000 daily during several weeks in April.

And:

This is a preview of New Case Rates and Death Rates. Read the full post (268 words, estimated 1:04 mins reading time)

A Judicial…Misunderstanding

Posted on 2 July 2020 by eehines

The Supreme Court has struck Louisiana’s abortion law that required doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital before they could be permitted to carry out abortions. The ruling was by a 5-4 vote; the five hung their ruling on the Court’s 2016 Whole Woman’s Health decision holding that there were “no medical benefits” to such a requirement, and so “a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy” was circumscribed.

One of the five was Chief Justice John Roberts.

Here’s his rationalization for his vote:

This is a preview of A Judicial…Misunderstanding. Read the full post (236 words, estimated 57 secs reading time)

Borderline….

Posted on 18 June 2020 by eehines

According to Johns Hopkins’ CSSE data, the US has suffered 116,000 deaths from the Wuhan Virus as of 16 June. That’s not the whole story, though, and the raw number overstates the case along one critical dimension.

The US death toll from [Wuhan Virus] in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities has topped 50,000….

That’s 43% of all our virus fatalities occurring in those old folks homes.

Those same CSSE data indicate that the US has some 2,100,000 cases—of which 250,000 have occurred in those facilities. That’s 12% of all our virus infections concentrated in those old folks homes, and a 20% fatality rate for our old folks, given infection in our old folks homes. Which compares with a 3% fatality rate outside those facilities.

This is a preview of Borderline….. Read the full post (247 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

A Plebe's Site

Quam bene vivas referre, non quam diu.

Tag Archives: health care